Features & reviews p3

By 1949, in exile in the US, the idea of England had been spoiled for PG Wodehouse by the bullying treatment he had received as a consequence of his wartime capers. I think it was settled in Wodehouse's mind by then that he would never return. In The Mating Season, written that year, an elaborate revenge is visited upon Christopher Robin and all the slushy works of AA Milne, who had been one of Wodehouse's chief persecutors. Wodehouse threw off the idea of being "quintessentially English"; a fatuous non-compliment that is still paid him by his less attentive or literate fans.

Features & reviews p5

When the bigwigs of the arts world fall out, things can get a bit hairy, and the wigs don't come much bigger than Lord Bragg. In this week's New Statesman he rounds on Barbican chief John Tusa for daring to suggest that all is not rosy in the government's cultural garden. Now Tusa has hit back: Melvyn, he says, should get out more.

Features & reviews p8

These two books by former Tory MPs who served in the last Conservative government inevitably overlap, so you might expect them to be somewhat similar. If so, you would be wrong. Though they often describe the same events, they could easily be about two different parliaments on two different planets.

Features & reviews p11

You could be a little cynical about this, and other works coming out in this series: Penguin are republishing the volumes more or less as they first appeared to the public. So you get this slim vol. (well, not too slim, and anything with "Hyperion" in it isn't something you end up speed-reading), a three-page afterword on the publication history from Michael Schmidt (the man who cut a deal with the curs at OUP in order to keep them publishing contemporary poetry) - and that's it.

I wish I had written Doris Lessing's novel Mara and Dann, the epic story of an orphaned brother and sister wandering northwards through Africa in search of water during a new ice age, 25,000 years hence. Her post-tech world is utterly strange, detailed and absorbing as a long bright dream.

Radio 3 commissioned this octave of short stories by a distinguished clutch of writers. Give it a musical theme, said the brief. It's a nice idea and loudly to be applauded. But music is very tricky territory for writers. Some of the eight wisely kept the soft pedal down. Not William Boyd, alas, whose story relies entirely on its final page revelation that the 14-year-old Hamburg brothel pianist who is allowed a free grope by one of the tarts after he plays a waltz for her is none other than the young Brahms. Unfortunately scholars now accept that there is no evidence that the composer ever tinkled in clip joints.